Panacea
by xxCerezasxx
Summary: AU. Lori and Shane's talk in Better Angels goes a little different. Lori says she has a way to fix things. Rick/Shane/Lori, Rick/Shane, Shane/Lori, Rick/Lori, mentions of Shane/Andrea.


**Rating: M**

**Pairings Rick/Shane/Lori, Rick/Shane, Shane/Lori, Rick/Lori, mentions of Shane/Andrea**

**Disclaimer: don't own**

**Summary: Shane and Lori's talk in Better Angels goes a little different. Lori says she has a way to fix things.**

**Thank you to gravi_girl123 on livejournal for being my beta and muse.**

* * *

Panacea

The silence stretches out between them, empty and treacherous as an unpaved road. They stand there together so long he wonders if she's waiting on him even though this is all her. Lori's end to the conversation Shane's been trying to have for weeks. He scrubs the back of his head, wind and golden sunlight and _Lori_ making his eyes tear and squint.

"I want to fix things between us," she says. She digs into the dirt with the heels of her boots. "Not just you and me. The three of us."

"That's easier said than done." The bruise on his eye is tender and Lori watches as he prods at it with his fingertips. Tests it for weakness. There's a deeper significance there, something more than the ruptured capillaries and reddened skin. Like a love bite Rick gave to him, not with his teeth but with his fists. "No matter what happens, there's no taking any of it back."

He remembers _if I could take it all back brother, I would_ and his pulse flutters in his chest.

"I want us to be a family. You, me, Rick, and Carl." It takes him a moment to realize what she's getting at. He's picturing the before, Rick and Lori married, holding hands and kissing, Carl playing happily at their feet while Shane sat off on the periphery, happy to be there, ready to offer Rick a hand or Carl his lap, Lori a smile when she'd need it. But that—husband, wife, son, brother—isn't the family Lori means.

"Didn't think Rick was the type to go for that." Close as he can get to the why of the matter. Never got to know Lori too closely, but Rick, everything about Rick Shane knows.

Rick's like an extension of himself. The heart Shane no longer has.

"You'd be surprised." Lori meets his eyes again, wind whipping her dark hair against her cheek. "You got no idea what I can talk Rick into."

"This," he says, tries to articulate, but his tongue feels heavy and out of place. "This is a whole 'nother thing."

Lori snorts, laughs a little with him, and the quiet creeps in on them again. The blades of the windmill make a full rotation.

"Do you remember the shirt you got Rick for Christmas?"

"The gag gift? Yeah." He'd bought it on a whim. Saw it on a sales rack while shopping for his mom. Can still see it: floral print with fuchsia petals and maroon stems, big burgundy buttons and ruffled sleeves. The look on Rick's face when he'd taken it out of the box, four in the afternoon on Christmas Eve—fucking priceless.

"I got him to wear it the Easter weekend we spent at his parents' house." Lori smiles, a wide one, light in her eyes that fills her face.

He whistles. Rick never told him about that.

"Shit, girl." He lets her chuckle, puts his hands in his pockets to keep them off his belt. His tone's flat as a desert, shifting sand and dust, when he talks. "You know this ain't the same thing." He wants it to be, sounds so simple between the two of them—no buttons or ruffles, just another way to wrap Rick up.

The windmill makes another turn as Lori scoots closer. She rests a hand lightly on his neck, fingers brushing against his collar, warm next to the hollow of his throat.

"Rick told me what happened," Lori says and Shane doesn't have to ask for clarification. He knows just what she means. "He told me awhile back. Right after we got married. He said," Lori shakes her head, mouth twisted. "Said_ Lori I think you should know Shane used to be in love with me_. Just like that in the middle of dinner. Then he asked me to pass the peas."

The moment is preserved, warped by the whiskey, like a mirror twisted in reverse. Drunk. He'd been drunk. Crowded with Rick on his living room couch, feet on the coffee table, shoulders touching and too much heat. They were watching football, Shane thinks. Watching football and he'd said it. _Don't marry Lori man I need you here with me_. Had tried to kiss Rick's mouth but gotten his cheek. And Rick had answered, that same fucking refrain: _you don't love me, you think you do but you don't_.

Like Rick would even fucking know.

"Rick ain't much for subtleties." He brushes his mouth and can still feel it—Rick's stubble scratching his lips.

"No," Lori says, hair swinging. Her teeth catch glints of sun. "For Rick things have always been pretty black and white."

"That's a bit of an understatement." In Rick's world there isn't even a word for gray. It's all muted; no room for shading or Technicolor.

"I didn't believe him, not right away." They're back to this, Shane's young adult embarrassment. He'd gone on a bender after. Drank himself sick for a week. Woke up in his fair share of regretful beds. "Or at all. I thought he was being ridiculous, conceited, maybe. You had a new girlfriend every week."

"More than that." His affairs and flings, a never ending stream of girls. He'd loved a few of them, much as he was able, and they'd been good for him—good fucks and good girls and good company when he couldn't be with Rick. They'd served their purpose and he'd gotten over Rick, eventually, put the love off to the side, new space inside his chest. Things had improved after that. He'd been happy, never wanting, not until that bullet, the blood that had soaked right through his gloves. "Funny how things happen, huh?" He doesn't like it, the whole nostalgia thing. Talking about a Shane he'll never be.

"Do you still think about him like that?"

He wipes a hand over his face.

"Not since this all started." He gestures outward. Points to Lori, the farmhouse in the background, the entirety of their fractured lives held together by thread and glue.

Lori glances up, eyebrows raised like she was expecting something different. The rejection, denial, whatever it is, makes her purse her lips. She manages to look angry with him.

"Could you? If I talk to him and he says yes, _would_ you?"

He pictures it: him, Rick, Lori, Carl and a baby on the way. His teeth vibrate with a held-in yes.

"Not like I got any better offers." Andrea. Not an offer, really. More like Shane's Plan B. Good enough in any life but this.

She wants more than that from him, he can tell. Lori's gray eyes trembling for that unequivocal yes. Confirmation that it's not just her he wants, that he won't move in on her and forget Rick. She acts like the Grimes family doesn't already have his heart and soul. Like they haven't already killed him effective as a bullet to the brain. "I want it," he says, plucking her hand off his shoulder. He holds it in his, thumb smoothing circles into the heel of her palm. "Lori I probably want it more than you."

Her eyes spark at him, recognition in the water of her tears. Liquid like she might apologize again, like he's given her everything she wants to hear. _I'm sorry Shan_e when she shouldn't be.

"I'm gonna go talk to him now. When he gets back tonight, then we'll see." She untangles their fingers gently, none of that burning rejection from before. Shane feels something inside him settle.

He watches her go, weightless with renewed purpose; skip in her boots as she drags Rick by the arm off the porch.

* * *

Randall's body is cooling at his feet and his nose leaks a puddle into the dirt. He's on edge, listening for the sound of footsteps as the wind whips through the dead and dying leaves. He knows how this looks. Randall, lanky and crumpled in a little heap, Shane, bigger and not too damaged, blank eyes and blanker face. But it's the things people can't see that matter. Randall was more manipulative than Rick thought he could be, savvy, not some harmless country boy. Better at surviving than he let on, telling Shane what he thought Shane wanted to hear. Dangerous like a dog that doesn't bite until it's kicked.

Shane wasn't willing to wait for the catalyst that sent Randall over the edge. Preemptive is what this was, eliminating the first sign of a threat. Rick will understand some day, however long down the line it takes to see that Shane was right. Years from now when they're alive because of what Shane did.

Camp is quiet when he stumbles from the woods. Andrea's off in the distance, up on that watchtower he finished, blonde hair bright against the turquoise sky. She's got her rifle hoisted high over her shoulder. She's on lookout. For what (who), Shane already knows.

He goes in through the back of the house and lets the screen door slam shut. His breathing is ragged, wet sounding as he tries to get air in through mucous and blood. Went a little overboard, maybe. Busted himself up good. His nose drips blood across Hershel's floor, slicks up the linoleum, leaves red imprints of his feet.

Rick's the first to find him, of course. Tiptoes in with the Python drawn like he's expecting something different. He sees Shane, the gory spatter down his chin, and holsters his gun. Puts out two hands to help steady him.

Shane's more disoriented than he realized. Might have given himself a concussion. His skull's still rattling from the impact with the tree.

"What happened?" Rick's hands are on his jaw now. He makes Shane look at him. Rick's face is drawn tight with worry, same kind he has for everybody, nothing intense or new. No indication of anything but frienship. Shane wonders about Lori and the talk she said she'd give.

"Randall." Rick draws back at that, a little. He gives Shane some space. "Clocked me in the face," he says, panting. Throb of pain hot inside his nose. He thinks he can feel bits of cartilage grind together. "I chased after him. Out into the woods."

Lori's there, then. She comes from nowhere, brandishing a dish towel. She uses it to stop the blood dribbling over his lips. He tastes the iron, spits, and lets her tilt his head back. Her hands are warm on his wind-chilled face.

"Took my piece from me when I was down. I didn't realize 'till I went to grab it." He tastes blood again, this time it's thicker, draining out of his sinuses and down his throat. "He was resting on this log, you know, rubbin' at his leg. He made me do it." It comes out shaky, broken—better than he rehearsed. "Made me do it the second that little bastard took my gun."

"Do what?" Lori whispers, eyes all concern and fear. Fear for him, not of him, finally.

At his side, Rick's just watching him with a look that's distant and cold. It's a stern expression. One Shane can't read. Detached, if he had to guess. Rick's working things out; testing everything Shane has to say. He's not worried. Somewhere Rick's got a little faith in him left.

"Made me snap his neck." He shuts his eyes and tries to find the fleeting edges of compunction. Any old guilt he can force into his face. He thinks back to Otis, how it had felt before the change slid over him, into him, the emotions between the trip back from the school and eulogizing Otis in Hershel's field. He latches onto the memory and lets it spread.

He sees Randall's crooked smile, his uneven teeth. Hears Randall's offer _You never gotta be alone if you don't want_. Feels his hands around Randall's neck, delicate like a baby bird, hand on Randall's cheek and one hard twist. Remembers all of that, the sound it made, crack like burning firewood, and his breath doesn't even hitch.

He's too far gone for that.

"How long did you track him?"

Just like Rick, Shane wants to laugh, to be willing to go out and collect Randall's body.

"Not sure, mile or so. Why's it matter?"

"Doesn't." Rick shrugs. This time when Shane tries to make eye contact, Rick is the one who looks away.

Lori mops at his face again, firm enough with the towel that he winces. Fresh blood trickles in rivulets out his nose.

Rick starts toward the door.

"You're not gonna bring him back, are you?" Lori's pissed, mad as Shane's ever seen her. She crumples the bloodied dishrag in her hand and puts her hands high on her hips.

Rick doesn't answer, which for Rick is answer enough.

"What about—" Lori drops her voice. She mouths something to Rick. It's obvious enough they're talking about him. Shane leans his head further back and tastes metal.

"That can wait," Rick says to her. He kisses her on the forehead before turning back to Shane. "Have Hershel look at that." Rick waves a hand at his mangled nose, body language soft with concern. Whatever Shane had seen in him earlier has passed. "I'm going to find Daryl and Glenn and call off the search."

* * *

Shane volunteers for first watch that night. His nose is broken, Hershel's confirmed as much. The pain makes it impossible to sleep, all the blood pulsing there, squeezing around the fractured cartilage and bone. There's no sense in trying, in laying down his head, not when he's more comfortable to stand. He's more peaceful out here than he ever could be inside, tossing and turning on Hershel's parlor floor.

The stars gleam above him, spread out and scattered, like a handful of metal shavings tossed into the navy sky. There's a promise of fog somewhere off beyond the tree line, smudge of gray that moves in slow. Andrea will be on watch by the time it makes it in to eclipse the moon.

The windmill creaks as someone climbs the side. The whole thing lurches with the promise of a fall that will never come. Shane's checked the foundation and it's sturdy. It's just the frame that likes to moan under any added weight.

Someone steps onto the platform, across from him, and he doesn't have to look to know that it's Rick.

"You don't have to keep watch tonight. Not busted up like you are."

"I'm fine. Don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep much. S'bad as the time at football practice when Rodney head butted me in the face." That had been his worst broken nose to date. Two hundred and twenty pounds rammed right into him, more blood than he'd ever thought could come out of him. Doctor at the ER had said it was a miracle he didn't need plastic surgery, that the bridge had taken most of the weight and managed not to cave right in.

He can almost hear the stifled chuckle when Rick speaks

"I remember that. You cried the whole way to the hospital."

He'd been embarrassed by that, crying into his sleeve like a baby while Rick held a cold pack on him and their coach drove. Rick had never said anything about it after.

"Man, Rodney was the third biggest linebacker in our division. You'd've cried too."

"Never said I wouldn't." Rick's tone changes, minutely, not enough that anyone else would know the difference. But Shane's had a thousand conversations with Rick, more than he's had with anyone else put together, and he knows that after the reminiscence is the turn. Rick's sneaky that way, lures you in sweet until you're caught inside his trap. "Lori talked with me earlier. _To_ me is more like it."

He keeps his back to Rick because somewhere along the line he became a coward, too afraid of what he'd see in Rick to look. He stands with his hands out of his pockets, fingers so numb they feel frozen around his gun.

"I know what you and Lori want in this," Rick continues, his sigh a hesitation. For the first time in the years Shane's known Rick, he's got no idea what direction the discussion is about to go. "I've been trying to get my head around it, wasn't easy, not with everything that happened today."

Carl's part in Dale's death. Shane's hands and Randall's brittle neck.

"But," Rick pauses, almost like it's intentional, and Shane wants to tell him to go ahead, have one of his unnecessary meditations on it. He's waited practically his entire life for this. Another minute or hour or day isn't going to make a difference. "I'm open to it. This thing—us—I think it's something we should have done a long time ago."

He spins, searching Rick's face for any hint of dishonesty, those naked flickers of regret. He just sees Rick and his weary smile, feels the raw intensity of his words. Suddenly he's twenty-three again, young and drunk and so stupidly in love with Rick.

He sways forward, new rhythm. He's kissed Lori but never Rick.

But Rick's hand presses to his chest, open palm across his heart, and holds Shane back.

"I know you killed Randall," he says it thin lipped and haggard. Rick's eyes an empty, aching blue. The tip of his index finger finds the divot of Shane's collarbone and strokes, hot, against the cold sliver of exposed skin. "If we're gonna do this," Rick says, all the sincerity he can muster, long, white exhalation of breath that curls like smoke. "You need to start trusting me. You need to let me make the right decisions. We need to be how we were."

"Decisions, huh?" Merle Dixon in Atlanta. CDC and Sophia. Their people buried in shallow graves. Those are Rick's decisions.

Rick draws his hand away.

"You can have input," Rick says, rough edge to his voice. He's begging, almost. Pleading with Shane to take the bait. To agree so they can put it all behind them. Return to being Rick and Shane. "But I make the final calls."

He looks to the round, pale moon. It shines like polished silver, bathes them in an incandescent light. In the dim glow Rick's face is full of shadows.

"Do you mean it?" Shane asks. He continues when Rick cocks his head. "This thing. Us. I don't want it to just be a solution. I want it to be real. You and Lori and Carl and me." He's had a taste of that with Lori—how it is to love someone and have that love returned.

He won't be a stray Rick takes in out of pity.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't. You know that." Rick's eyebrows pull, offended by the accusation, arched like upside down U's.

"Yeah brother," he says, breath flowing out of him. His chest deflates, rage gone for the moment. He's learned to let it come and let it go. Can't get a handle on it either way.

"I don't mean it to be an ultimatum. But I have to be sure. My family," Rick stops himself, catches his tongue between his teeth. "Our family, I need to know you'll help me keep them safe."

Rick's way, Rick's rules. And he can't, and he has to, because he's got so much to lose. When he put faith in Rick things were better, in that far off life where skeletons weren't rotten down past the bone.

It's a struggle, getting his throat to unclench enough to choke out the words.

"Okay." Rick perks up, mouth wrinkling in a silent, joyous laugh. Shane brings his hands around, palms on Rick's jaw line, Rick's hands on Shane's own, fingers splayed wide so Shane can feel the warmth. Intimate, familiar, closeness from early autumn that he'd forgotten, Carl bleeding out on Hershel's bed. "Don't make me regret it."

Shane leans in again and this time it's Rick who kisses him, lingering softness, molasses slow.

They have to break apart, what feels like hours later, as the watchtower rattles and Andrea ascends to take her shift. She greets them, for Shane a smile, Rick a glare. Another life and he could have loved her, or so Shane thinks.

"Night," she says, rifle over her shoulder, safety off, chamber loaded, steady in the stance he taught her.

He doesn't say goodnight, tucks himself closer to Rick as they head into the house, light spilling out onto the porch a dusky orange. He's tired finally (at ease more like it). He knows that he can sleep, fixes to, kicks off his boots and heads toward his sleeping bag in the corner, one of Andrea's pillows bunched up on top.

"You should sleep in the bedroom with us," Rick whispers, faint as to not wake T-Dog who stirs when the floorboards near his head creak under Shane's bare feet. "Makes sense, I mean. Now that we've…"

Now that they've kissed.

"One floor to another," he says, grinning, shoulders higher, content to sleep nearest he can get to Rick and Lori's bed.

* * *

For a few days things are static. They're cautious about it, preoccupied. There are fences to check and cattle to help Hershel catch. Winter provisions have to be stockpiled before the frost. Shane spends his waking hours in the watchtower or out with Rick hunting for supplies: cold weather coats and blankets, snow boots, dried goods. He passes the nights sacked out in his sleeping bag, fast asleep or listening to Rick and Carl snore.

They get a chance to take the plunge after a week and a half of hoping to get just a sliver of time alone. Doesn't seem to want to happen, not with chores and Carl wandering his way all through the house. Shane's afraid the only thing that's going to work is a coordinated effort and then, by some fortune he thought could no longer exist, it happens.

Carl spends most of that afternoon helping his mom and the other women shell peas. When Shane's inside, Carl sends him pleading looks, _Shane get me out please_ but when he comes in for a drink an hour or so before dinner, Carl's slumped on the sofa, drooling into a pillow, bowl of peas at his feet.

Lori looks at him, at Carl, and Shane knows exactly where things are about to go. He recognizes the way Lori's eyes crinkle, tiny lines in the corner, hint of a smile that shows her teeth.

He gets Rick. He has to run all around the farm trying to find him, but he does, eventually, and it's a conscious effort not to sprint back. There's an art to fucking around under everyone's noses, like a ballet, almost, graceful and slow. Nonchalance, he prefers to call it. Gotta act like you're thinking about anything and everything else.

Lori's waiting for them in the bedroom. They don't lock the door, because that would be suspicious on its own. Rick, Shane, and Lori locking themselves in Hershel's bedroom? As obvious as walking in on any of them mid-kiss. It's not that they mind, end of the world changes priorities, they just want to get a handle on it for themselves before it all goes public. They have to be sure it's really going to work, not be one of those pipe dream problems. Things that are good in theory and never quite pan out. No sense riling everyone up over nothing.

Rick and Lori look at a loss right when they start. Shane's got his shirt off, belt unbuckled, pants open, and they're standing there, watching, barely out of their boots. Shane's had his fair share of sex with two people, affairs he never told Rick about. What you do with your best friend's neighbors and acquaintances is private, especially when you aren't sure how he's going to react. Rick never did approve much of his sex life. He wants to take the initiative, guide them into their places, but it's not his show to lead. They aren't hesitant so much as tempered. Not like he and Lori had been in the forest, wild and raw.

"Fuck it," Lori murmurs, hauling him forward by the belt loops, tongue pressing slick inside his mouth. He's got her then; arms on her, under her, helping her leg get up around his waist. Rick's there too, mouth on his shoulder, teeth worrying the skin.

He drops Lori on the bed and they get undressed in earnest. Rick stripping himself downright efficient, the both of them helping Lori kick her jeans out of the way. There's not enough time for everything, not what they all want, so they have to settle. He watches Rick go down on Lori; face between her legs, wet sounds his mouth makes, Lori biting her lip to hold in moans. He can only watch for a little while before he has to kiss her, swallow her noises, get his mouth on her: jaw, throat, and breasts. Her breasts aren't big and he likes that about her, they're enough for palmfulls, enough that he can work them in his hands, tweak them, pink nipples pert and hard.

It's his turn after Rick's done. Moves without being told to, where Lori's already so warm from Rick. Doesn't take much the second time, a few good, languid licks, touch of his fingers. She's coming, again, thighs trembling around his head. Rick's behind him, out of nowhere, pushing him forward and onto her, Rick's chest to his back. Lori wraps her arms around him, more tender than he's used to, his cheek on the pillow beside her. Her breath fans hot across his ear.

He squeezes his thighs shut when Rick slips between them, makes Rick a tight space to fuck into with motions that rock the bed. He's so hard it hurts but it's easy this way, rocking down against Lori, moving with Rick's rhythm and Rick's flow. It gets him thinking what it could be like, Rick fucking him fucking Lori, other way around maybe, every variation in-between. He comes with Rick's hand on him, Lori's mouth on the side of his neck. And he shivers, just a little, at the low pitch to Rick's final groan as his thighs get slicked and wet.

There isn't time for more than a few quick kisses after, three of them using a towel to clean up. Rick kisses him deep enough that his stubble scratches, both their mouths full and open, red in the corners of Shane's lips. Lori kisses him sweeter, smoothes the burns Rick leaves on him over with her tongue. They get dressed and don't leave together, Shane first, creeping quietly out into the hallway, hands on his belt as he goes out into the kitchen, through the backdoor where nobody can see.

He stops on the porch, rocker creaking in the breeze behind him, knocking against the house. Sound similar to the one the headboard made when it hit the wall. He licks his lips, tastes Lori, feels Rick, on his tongue and on his skin. Something solid but not oppressive. Not the crushing weight he remembers, the unrequited love that made him a mess. Just Rick and Lori in all the ways he wants.

"Shane!" Glenn calls out to him, hand waving around his cap. "Come on."

Perimeter check with Glenn followed by dinner. Then another night of sleeping near the foot of Rick and Lori's bed.

He's looking forward to it.

* * *

There's watery sunlight filtering in through the bedroom window as Shane leans against Hershel's dresser, arms folded across his chest. They're scheduled to fuck that morning, worked it out the night before. It makes him laugh, the idea of having to pencil in sex like that, like they're a married couple staring at the calendar and marking down when and where. With two people there's room for spontaneity. Past few weeks he's been with them both separate: him and Rick and reconnaissance mission quickies, trying to suck each other off in the Hyundai's backseat, him and Lori, snuck away together into a bathroom or bedroom, careful not to rattle the sink or wrinkle sheets.

"Baby," Lori puts her hand over Carl's head. Carl's lacing his boots and staring up between them. He's got dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. He still has nightmares, sometimes, and even from the floor Shane can hear the muffled hiccups of Carl tries to stifle into his pillow, the ones that shake the entire bed. "Go out and help Maggie collect the eggs, okay?"

Carl shuffles his feet, shoulders slumped, but he does as he's told. Maggie meets Carl in the hallway and Shane wonders, for a minute, if Maggie's in on it before Lori shuts the bedroom door.

He doesn't dwell on it after that. Doesn't dwell on anything, too busy with Rick and Lori, thinking of them and nothing else.

Until the room goes quiet, Lori and Rick bleaching white.

Shane turns and there, there's Carl, eyes hidden under the brim of his father's hat.

"Carl, I thought I told you to help Maggie," Lori says, startled like a deer caught in the headlights, Rick's hands cupped around her breasts.

"There weren't many eggs." Carl has a shocked look to him, whole body frozen in place.

Shane grabs his pants from around his ankles and hauls them back up.

"This looks weird, huh bud?"

Carl nods at him. He watches with his eyebrows cocked as Shane looks around for his shirt.

"Near the nightstand," Rick says, palms still on Lori to keep her covered. After walking corpses and Dale's guts splashed everywhere, his mother's boobs are the last thing Carl needs to see.

"C'mon." He puts both arms in his shirt. He doesn't bother with the buttons. His stomach's still wet from where Rick licked him, navel up to chest. "Give your momma some time to get dressed."

Carl follows him, squinting eyes and scrunched up face. Shane's waiting for him to come out with it, because Shane's the one Carl goes to with all his questions: how to tie a knot and are my mom and dad gonna break up and do you think everyone else in the world is dead. Carl says nothing, content to walk beside him, kicking occasional rocks that go skittering through the dirt.

"You gotta start listening to your mom more, you know." He hooks his thumbs into his belt. He bites on a smile when Carl does the same.

"I didn't think you'd all be—" Carl pauses, chews his lip. "I don't know what you were doing."

"You serious?" He stops, flat out, and it takes Carl a minute to slow his momentum. He turns back to Shane and tips his head away, sheepish. "Your folks ain't given you that talk yet?"

"No."

"Carl, man." He laughs, can't help it. He squeezes Carl's shoulder in his hand. "Sometimes I don't know what to do with you."

"You already do pretty okay," Carl says, and Shane takes that as a compliment.

Lori and Rick find them a few minutes later sitting up in the loft. Carl's feet are dangling out the only window; Shane's sitting with his elbows on his knees. He's finally buttoned his shirt up against the cold.

"Carl." Lori's flushed, still flustered. Her cheeks are a bright, cherry red. "What you saw, I know it must have been confusing."

"Not really." Carl shrugs. It's a gesture somewhere between _stop talking_ and _what can you do_. It makes Shane wonder why Rick and Lori are trying so hard to keep things from him. Carl's never had a problem with the truth. But maybe that's why he always goes to Shane when he wants things told to him straight. "A little, I guess. But I get it."

"You get it?" Rick presses, quiet, a look that's not entirely disbelief.

"I think so." Carl keeps staring out at the line of trees at the edge of Hershel's property. The forest is beginning to lose its leaves. A week or two more and it'll be naked, gnarled branches straining toward the sky. "Shane's like a dad to me," Carl says it gently, delicately, so as not to offend Rick. "He's my best friend but I know he sees me as a kid. He doesn't have anyone, and you guys love him, so now he's married to you too."

Lori and Rick startle at the clarity of the statement. It's now how Shane would have put it, they're a long way from married, but he likes the sentiment. He likes that that's how things could be.

"Alright then," Lori says, silenced. Rick's eyes are warm as he watches his son.

"You can go back to having sex now," Carl deadpans, frowning. Shane forces a cough to keep from laughing. "I'll stay here."

"We're done with that for today." Lori reaches out for Carl, pulls him to her, and he goes along with it, lets himself be crushed against his mother's chest. "Sometimes I wonder how you got so smart."

"Luck." Carl grins, biting the inside of his cheek as Rick ruffles his hair. "You're really not gonna go?"

"Nah." Rick drops his hand from Carl's hair to the back of his neck. "Breakfast is in fifteen minutes. We'll stay here until then." iStay here with you/i and that's what Carl's been needing, Shane thinks. For the last few months he and Rick and Lori have been caught up in their own shit, eternal drama, and Carl's been acting out, trying to strike out on his own and prove himself as something more than just a kid. Before Rick came back, before things got bad and just finally got better, he and Lori had Carl in their sights every hour of every day.

The three of them plus Carl is a challenge. One that's worth it in the end. Shane would go through it again, the frustration and the loneliness, magnified a hundred fold, so long as it all returned to this: Carl, Lori, and Rick.

Nighttime descends, a silent dark, and the mood doesn't break. There's an atmosphere of family around everything they do. At dinner Carl looks to him, same way he does his mom and dad. And Lori touches him, hand on his thigh underneath the table, and they both stretch their legs out, taking turns bumping at Rick's foot to make him glare. They play cards after that, just the four of them, sitting Indian-style on the floor until it's time for bed. Carl wins, nothing but dried beans in place of poker chips, still smug as he shows off his loot.

Carl sits up in bed an hour after he should be asleep. Shane sees his outline, dark, against the white backdrop of the winter moon.

"Can Shane sleep in the bed with us?" Carl asks.

"I'm fine down here." He is, even if the cold from the hardwood seeps through his sleeping bag. He's got two pairs of socks on and it's enough to cut the chill.

He remembers one time, on a Grimes and Walsh family vacation (his name for it, not theirs), the kind they took when Carl was young and Shane was happy to play babysitter, Rick had forgotten to make the hotel reservations early and the room Shane had booked for himself that morning had a single king. He'd said he'd sleep on the little half sofa, but Carl had insisted then too, and they'd managed to fit, the four of them, heaped together, Carl's little feet digging into Shane's left side.

Carl scoots over and pats the empty space beside him.

"Might as well," Rick says, hiding his smile in the nape of Lori's neck.

Shane slides in next to Carl, back to the edge of the bed and to the wall. He puts his arm out, over Carl, and he expects Carl to shove him off. At twelve Shane wouldn't have let his old man cuddle him like that for nothing but Carl moves closer to him, top of his head tucked beneath Shane's chin. Shane's fingers just barely touch Rick and Lori's where their hands are intertwined over Lori's belly. Lori's pinky stretches out and hooks around his thumb.

He never thought the end of the world would come to this, his sharing a bed with two (three) other people. It's comfortable, easy in that family way. He figures he'll lie awake for awhile, too worried he'll turn over and tumble off the bed. Rick's snoring and Lori's breathing, Carl wriggling against his chest, it's lulling him to sleep, actually, and he goes with it, eyes drooping shut.

* * *

Snow takes them by surprise in December, few months after things have come to pass. They've got their winter gear ready, thermal under his sweater beneath a fleece. Andrea's got herself in layers, long-sleeves and flannel and a white coat. Their breath crackles as they head out, walking close, tramping through the ankle high snow and sharing heat.

Andrea gives him a once over, hands cocked high on her hips. His stance in replica. She takes in the sight of him, mouth all red from Rick's beard he's dead set against shaving, hickey on his throat from Lori's lips. He zips the collar of his fleece up a bit further. Her grin's twisted as she speaks

"So much for odd man out."

"Shut it," he says, laughing with her. He gives her a playful nudge with his foot, almost sends her flopping down onto her ass. "Sometimes being the third wheel ain't so bad."

"I told you it was about finding your place." Her eyes glint, blue and wicked. "I have to say though, I never thought that your coming between Rick and Lori would lead to _coming_ between Rick and Lori."

"Nothing's gonna come between you and a bullet either if you don't keep that to yourself."

Andrea holds her hands up, palms open in mock fear.

"I'm not going to tell anyone. I don't know if you've noticed, but you're the closest friend I've got."

"Yeah, we're real pals, you and me," says it as a joke and yet somehow means it. She was there when it counted, when no one else wanted to take his side. He still wants her, even if it's just to talk.

"I'm serious." She turns her face to him. The cold air biting her nose and cheeks bright pink. "I'm happy for you."

"I'm happy for me too."

He peers out to the horizon. There's a single figure lumbering toward them, barely making progress through the snow and icy grass. A walker, teenage girl, he thinks, tattered tank top and ragged denim shorts. Its gait is more awkward than normal, legs stiff and solid, frozen muscles that won't loosen and let it move.

"You wanna?" Andrea points to it with the Berretta he gave her.

"Ladies first," he tells her, grinning as she lines up and takes the shot.

The walker lurches, snow behind it spattered red. It falls neatly, bullet clean through its clouded eye. He's impressed with himself and Andrea, how well they've worked together, how just a season earlier she couldn't hit a log swinging from a tree. She's come along under his direction and he thinks for a moment of her nails digging into his shoulders, body heavy in his lap. That spirals off though, Lori's nails and Rick's shoulders, Carl sitting in his mother's lap. No room for Andrea in there.

He's the Grimes', wholly. Shane knows now that he never stood a chance. There are paths life takes, roads you carve from it, others that are set into motion, irreversible as stone. This the journey created for him the instant he met Rick. It took him a while, crashes burns and detours, but he's found his way.


End file.
